Monday, January 25, 2016

With the clock running out on the legislative session the representatives will soon decide several important issues. No issue is more controversial, nor more contentious, than Senate Bill 0239, the bill which prohibits Michigan municipalities from enacting public safety measures that restrict pit bulls.

Michigan witnessed back-to-back fatal pit bull attacks on December 2nd and December 3rd, 2015. In the days following the attacks Michigan newspapers and editorial writers found their voice and published a series of opinions about the pending attempt to preempt local public safety laws. The advocates of fighting breeds will continue to press their cause but there is no doubt about where the majority stands on this issue.

In the holiday rush Michigan's legislators may have lost track of the editorials. We have collected them here to remind the legislators of the resounding call for common sense public safety legislation.

Statistics quoted on SRUV are from the nation's authoritative source for current dog attack statistics, the 32+ year, continuously updated Dog attack deaths and maimings, U.S. & Canada.View or download the current PDF

Definitions:
SRUV uses the definition of "pit bull" as found in the Omaha Municipal Code Section 6-163. As pit bulls are increasingly crossed with exotic mastiffs, Catahoula Leopard Dogs and other breeds, the vernacular definition of "pit bull" must be made even more inclusive.

Sources cited by news media sometimes refer to "Animal Advocates" or sometimes "Experts." In many cases these words are used to refer to single-purpose pit bull advocates who have never advocated for any other breeds or species of animals. Media would be more accurate to refer to these pit bull advocates as advocates of fighting breeds.

Similarly, in many cases pit bull advocates refer to themselves as "dog lovers" or "canine advocates" and media often accepts this usage. The majority of these pit bull advocates are single-purpose advocates of fighting breeds.

Tuesday, January 5, 2016

[ NOTE: The list of Sources below includes news items concerning Steve Croft and Universal K9 of San Antonio. Also included is a list of pit bull attacks during the last months of 2015, the period Mr Croft's company has been in the news. Keep in mind that this extensive list represents only a few of the more notable pit bull attacks which occurred in Texas during this period. Comments are enabled for this post.]

For some it is impossible to separate the term "pit bull" from the word "sweet." For others it is impossible to think of pit bulls without also thinking of unprovoked attacks on humans.

Pit bulls provoke fierce responses. For some people pit bulls and money are so interrelated that it's difficult to think of pit bulls without thinking of them as a source of revenue.

Historically, there are two ways of making money off of pit bulls: fighting them or breeding them for fighting. But during the last decade pit bull rescue has also become a significant revenue generator.

Now an entrepreneur in San Antonio has devised yet another way to make money from pit bulls. It's quick, it's easy, and it requires little or no up-front capital investment.

Steve Croft of Universal K9 in San Antonio scouts the Austin area shelters and is given his pick of the surplus pit bulls.1 Mr Croft then transfers the pit bulls to police departments, most of them in small rural communities, claiming the pit bulls are trained K-9s. Mr Croft is reimbursed for his efforts by one of the country's most ardent deep-pocket pit bull advocacy groups, Animal Farm Foundation (AFF) of upstate New York.

As part of the transaction he trains the new police handler, thereby creating another revenue stream. The handler comes to Texas, and Mr Croft is paid by the handler's employer. The training lasts 2 weeks, for which Mr Croft receives $2,500, according to news sources.

The Animal Farm Foundation originally agreed to underwrite a program which funded five shelter pit bulls a year for Mr Croft. It appears the first pit bulls (under the AFF program) were placed with police departments in 2015.

Now Mr Croft has added a new wrinkle to the formula. Mr Croft has discovered he can grow his revenue by selling his services directly on the open market, without involving the Animal Farm Foundation as an intermediary. Several towns have reportedly decided to buy discounted pit bull K-9s directly from Mr Croft.

* * * * *

"Many legitimate police dog programs are being criticized . . . because of the proliferation of fraudulent trainers and handlers," wrote Daniel A Smith, the eminent Michigan K9 educator and trainer.

One of the biggest problems I saw were very short training periods for police dogs. There are agencies that are giving only five weeks of training to handler and dog and then putting them on the street.2

Mr Croft claims that he can take shelter pit bulls, with unknown histories, train them in as little as four weeks, and produce K9s that are "just as good if not as good as the [purpose bred] dogs we buy from overseas." This stands in stark contrast to most K9 schools, which require twelve to sixteen weeks of K9 training before deployment.

Mr Croft's training philosophy raises questions about the shelter pit bulls he claims to have trained as K9s:

We take back steps with them and we teach them that it's OK to be a dog, it's OK to jump here, it's OK to grab that ball and keep it for yourself," Croft said. "Once they understand that they don't need to have those manners and are able to do those things, then we put the control back into them . . . .3

Put the control back into them? To say that Mr Croft's training methods are unorthodox is an understatement.

Search & Rescue/K9 Fraud

Cheyenne, Dakota, and Tahoe were perhaps the most famous, most heroic pit bull Search and Rescue (SAR) K9 team of all time. The pit bull heroes and their handler, Kristine Rae Crawford, were allegedly asked by NASA to assist in the search following the shuttle Columbia disaster on February 1, 2003.

Doubts began to surface about Crawford soon after the attack on the World Trade Center. Crawford subsequently pled guilty to charges of grand theft and embezzlement, and was eventually exposed in a 2006 ABC TV investigation.4 Blogger Craven Desires has tracked Crawford's muddy trail and in 2013 published a major exposé, after which Crawford closed at least four of her 29 websites, a number of which included PayPal donation buttons. The aftershocks of Crawford's downfall rippled through the pit bull chatrooms for years.5 Nonetheless, Dakota continues to be heralded as a pit bull hero on many pit bull advocacy sites, including Pit Bull Rescue Central.

Cheyenne, Dakota, and Tahoe in one of their pimped-out vehicles.
Crawford also used an elaborately refitted emergency medical vehicle with flashers.

Dakota may have been the most notorious fraudster claimed to have worked at Ground Zero, but the tragedy also attracted other unscrupulous SAR wannabees. Among those who were ultimately exposed were James Symington and his dog Trakr, and Sandra Anderson and her dog Eagle. The convictions of fraudulent K9 handlers such as Russell Lee Ebersole (2003) and Anderson (2004) brought additional attention to SAR/K9 fraudsters.

James Symington and Trakr pose at Ground Zero

Steve Croft's Rescued Pit Bull K9s

According to a recent article by the Dutch animal behaviorist Alexandra Semyonova, "Sales of pre-trained dogs to law enforcement agencies have mushroomed in recent decades, . . . especially by smaller agencies which previously could not afford to have canine units."6 Mr Croft jumped on the bandwagon and has been trying to sell recycled shelter pit bulls to law enforcement agencies since at least 2013. The media, which apparently can't resist a pit bull hero story, has responded with friendly coverage for Croft. The Associated Press has been especially generous.7

Croft had little success placing pit bull K9s until he formed the partnership with Animal Farm Foundation. With their help he has now placed at least one pit bull K9 in a major city, Poughkeepsie NY. As it happens, Poughkeepsie is a short drive from AFF headquarters in Duchess County NY. Croft's partnership with AFF has inoculated him from charges of fraud.

Mr. Croft may claim that his shelter pit bulls are every bit as good as a purpose-bred Belgian Malinois or German Shepherd K9, but the claim is fraudulent. We urge the US Police Canine Association and other reputable organizations to censure Mr Croft for his promotion of pit bull K9s. To allow pit bulls to proliferate among the ranks of well-trained, trusted K9s would seriously erode the public trust in a valued law enforcement asset.

* * * * *Notes:1 SRUV has not yet learned why Mr Croft makes the 75 mile trip to Austin for his pit bulls, rather than drawing them from one of San Antonio's shelters.2Fraudulent Use of Canines in Police Work
b Daniel A Smith3Local company trains shelter dogs to be police dogs
December 10, 2013; KSAT4Less Than Heroic?
Dog Handler Accused Of Scamming Those Who Help Her
December 12, 2006; KGTV ABC 10 San Diego5Pit Bull Talk; Pit Bull Forum6Police dogs should be trained as officers, not equipment
by Alexandra Semyonova; January 5, 2015; Animals 24-77 The media coverage was positive despite the fact that pit bulls killed 33 people in 2015, the fourth year in a row they have killed over 30 humans. In addition, in 2015 pit bulls maimed 459 people, or 1.25 people every day of the year. (See Statistics, below.) A forthcoming post will focus on David Klepper's laudatory AP article about Mr Croft's pit bull K9s, and about the AP's coverage of pit bulls in general.

Definitions:
SRUV uses the definition of "pit bull" as found in the Omaha Municipal Code Section 6-163. As pit bulls are increasingly crossed with exotic mastiffs, Catahoula Leopard Dogs and other breeds, the vernacular definition of "pit bull" must be made even more inclusive.

Sources cited by news media sometimes refer to "Animal Advocates" or sometimes "Experts." In many cases these words are used to refer to single-purpose pit bull advocates who have never advocated for any other breeds or species of animals. Media would be more accurate to refer to these pit bull advocates as advocates of fighting breeds.

Similarly, in many cases pit bull advocates refer to themselves as "dog lovers" or "canine advocates" and media often accepts this usage. The majority of these pit bull advocates are single-purpose advocates of fighting breeds.